The recipient of the second goat's lot (16:8, 10, 26) — kept transliterated here, matching NIV, NASB, and NWT, since no single English word covers what the name might mean. Three readings hold real scholarly ground and this translation votes for none of them. (1) A PLACE: the Mishnah (Yoma 6:6) names Azazel a specific rugged cliff roughly twelve miles from Jerusalem, where later practice had the goat driven off a precipice rather than simply released. (2) A FOLK ETYMOLOGY: ez (goat) + azal (departs) — 'the goat that goes away' — the reading behind William Tyndale's 1530 coinage 'scapegoat' (KJV, Geneva) and the Vulgate's caper emissarius, 'the emissary goat' (Douay-Rheims's 'the emissary goat'). Both are translations of a GUESSED etymology, not of the word itself. (3) A BEING: Second Temple literature (1 Enoch 8, 10) and later rabbinic demonology take Azazel as the proper name of a wilderness demon or fallen angel — a reading the grammar itself supports, since 'one lot for Jehovah, one lot for Azazel' (16:8) sets two proper names in parallel, and Leviticus elsewhere legislates against sacrificing to goat-demons, se'irim (17:7, already on these pages). The text does not adjudicate between a place, a folk-etymology, and a being; neither does this translation. → first discussed at Lev 16:8